Anna Karenina eBook

Though it was hard work to look after all the children
and restrain their wild pranks, though it was difficult
too to keep in one’s head and not mix up all
the stockings, little breeches, and shoes for the
different legs, and to undo and to do up again all
the tapes and buttons, Darya Alexandrovna, who had
always liked bathing herself, and believed it to be
very good for the children, enjoyed nothing so much
as bathing with all the children. To go over
all those fat little legs, pulling on their stockings,
to take in her arms and dip those little naked bodies,
and to hear their screams of delight and alarm, to
see the breathless faces with wide-open, scared, and
happy eyes of all her splashing cherubs, was a great
pleasure to her.

When half the children had been dressed, some peasant
women in holiday dress, out picking herbs, came up
to the bathing-shed and stopped shyly. Marya
Philimonovna called one of them and handed her a sheet
and a shirt that had dropped into the water for her
to dry them, and Darya Alexandrovna began to talk to
the women. At first they laughed behind their
hands and did not understand her questions, but soon
they grew bolder and began to talk, winning Darya
Alexandrovna’s heart at once by the genuine
admiration of the children that they showed.

“My, what a beauty! as white as sugar,”
said one, admiring Tanitchka, and shaking her head;
“but thin...”

“I’ve had four; I’ve two living—­a
boy and a girl. I weaned her last carnival.”

“How old is she?”

“Why, two years old.”

“Why did you nurse her so long?”

“It’s our custom; for three fasts...”

And the conversation became most interesting to Darya
Alexandrovna. What sort of time did she have?
What was the matter with the boy? Where was
her husband? Did it often happen?

Darya Alexandrovna felt disinclined to leave the peasant
women, so interesting to her was their conversation,
so completely identical were all their interests.
What pleased her most of all was that she saw clearly
what all the women admired more than anything was
her having so many children, and such fine ones.
The peasant women even made Darya Alexandrovna laugh,
and offended the English governess, because she was
the cause of the laughter she did not understand.
One of the younger women kept staring at the Englishwoman,
who was dressing after all the rest, and when she
put on her third petticoat she could not refrain from
the remark, “My, she keeps putting on and putting
on, and she’ll never have done!” she said,
and they all went off into roars.